Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

Nurses Union Leader Backs Single-Payer System in U.S.

The U.S. "could learn a thing or two about health care" from industrialized nations that provide universal coverage, Deborah Burger -- president of the California Nurses Association and the affiliated National Nurses Organizing Committee -- writes in a Wall Street Journal letter to the editor.

Burger writes in response to an editorial addressing a plan to expand health insurance coverage in Illinois. Burger writes that she agrees with the editorial's contention that the plan should be rejected. However, Burger writes that instead of "Canadian health care," the Illinois plan would have done too little to overhaul health care and simply would have used "public dollars to subsidize private, for-profit health insurance corporations so they can turn a quick buck by denying care to our patients."

Burger calls on members of Congress to enact a proposal by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) that would create a national single-payer health insurance system (Burger, Wall Street Journal, 5/21).

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